


the gingerbread puzzle

by lazyfish



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Christmas Fluff, Competitive Bobbi Morse, F/M, Gingerbread Houses
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:02:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28117392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazyfish/pseuds/lazyfish
Summary: Bobbi Morse is used to winning - so what happens when her boyfriends gives her a puzzle she just can't solve?
Relationships: Lance Hunter/Bobbi Morse
Comments: 19
Kudos: 30





	the gingerbread puzzle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Gort](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gort/gifts).



Bobbi loved a lot about Hunter.

She especially loved how good he was at losing.

She was the kind of person who made everything into a competition, and also the kind of person who liked to win every competition she was a part of, which meant an awful lot of losing for the others in her life. Lance, bless his heart, didn’t seem to care when she made things into competitions unnecessarily. Sometimes he even seemed to _enjoy_ it, which was weird, but… she wasn’t going to complain. There was no one else who seemed to like losing as much as he did, which was arguably why they were perfect for each other.

(That, and a bunch of other touchy-feely stuff Bobbi didn’t let herself think about until the two of them were alone in a dark room with no space between them. Baring her heart was never going to be easy, even in the confines of her own head.)

Christmas brought with it the third annual gingerbread house decoration competition. Bobbi had won years one and two, and had a good feeling about year three - she’d spent hours scrolling Pinterest for inspiration and had thought of a concept that would practically force Hunter to concede. 

“Ready?” she asked, perching herself at the end of the kitchen table. They’d opted for the pre-made gingerbread houses that year; year one they hadn’t and neither of their houses had made it through the night without collapse. The next ten days before Christmas they were going to be seeing an awful lot of family and friends, and Bobbi wanted something to show off.

“Ready,” Hunter affirmed, grinning at her. “You’re going down, Morse.”

“Keep telling yourself that, baby.” 

Hunter stuck his tongue out at her and Bobbi stuck hers out right back. 

“Three, two, one, go!”

The next thirty minutes were a flurry of activity for Bobbi. She had a cobblestone path made of jelly beans, roof tiles made of Nilla wafers, licorice ropes with tiny globs of icing to simulate fairy lights hung on the eaves, and of course a candy cane stick with a gumdrop on the end to serve as their porch lamp. Bobbi had one of those every year; it wasn’t a particularly Christmassy decoration, but her favorite part of the home she had built with Hunter was the porch lamp and how it was always on to guide her home after a long day. 

Which was dangerously sentimental, because of course it wasn’t the house she was happy to come home to - it was the man inside, who always had a cup of the most amazing tea ready for her, and a smile and a story about the day.

Bobbi bit her lip and forced herself to keep focus. She wasn’t going to lose their gingerbread house competition out of sentimentality.

When the time was up, Bobbi stepped back, careful not to use her sticky hands to brush a loose curl of hair out of her face. Her masterpiece was complete, and she was sure she was going to win even before looking over at Hunter’s.

“...What?” Bobbi asked after three seconds of stunned silence. Hunter’s gingerbread house barely had any decorations - just gumdrops and Mike and Ike’s strewn about in a seemingly random order.

“It’s avant garde,” Hunter answered with a grin. “And it’s a puzzle.”

“A puzzle?” Bobbi repeated. She did enjoy those.

“A puzzle,” Hunter confirmed. “And if you solve it by Christmas, you get a prize.”

“What if I don’t solve it by Christmas?” Bobbi asked, mind already whirring. What sort of puzzle could be hidden in a gingerbread house?

“You’ll solve it,” Hunter said confidently. “Now, Miss Morse, I do believe it is time to declare you the official winner of the Third Annual Morse-Hunter Gingerbread House Decorating Competition.”

He produced a green paper crown out of his pocket and Bobbi wrinkled her nose fondly as he plopped it atop her head.

“Love you,” Hunter said, kissing the tip of her wrinkled nose gently.

“Love you more.” She pecked his lips.

“Love you most.” Hunter pulled her in for a tight hug and Bobbi relaxed into his arms. They were both still covered in icing (Hunter had probably gotten some in her hair when he had put on the crown, too) but Bobbi didn’t care. She was in her kitchen, in her home, with the man she loved. A little icing was a small price to pay.

\---

While winning the original competition had been fun, Bobbi was now more concerned with winning the secondary competition - that was, solving the puzzle before Hunter’s Christmas deadline.

She took pictures of his house from several angles as well as close-up pictures of each surface of the gingerbread house in case it accidentally got jostled and the key to solving the puzzle was lost.

The first line of questioning Bobbi had was the architecture itself; even if the decorations looked random to Bobbi’s eye, someone who had more experience with architecture and architectural history may disagree. 

“Well?” Bobbi asked when she finished showing Fitz the slideshow on her phone and the original house Hunter had made. Fitz had come over to watch some soccer Christmas movie with Hunter, but Bobbi had stolen him to help with the puzzle.

“It doesn’t ring any bells for me,” Fitz admitted with a shrug. “But maybe he knew you’d ask me, so…”

That did sound like something Hunter would do - make her think she had the perfect resource to answer his puzzle while purposefully making it something his architect best friend had no idea about.

“Thanks anyways, Fitz,” Bobbi said, already scrolling through her phone. With the power of the Internet, it didn’t matter if Fitz specifically knew enough about architecture; if _someone_ did, then Bobbi would find them.

“Anytime.” Fitz retreated back down to the basement with Hunter, and Bobbi began writing a post to an architecture forum in hopes of finding more answers.

\---

The architecture angle was a bust - no one could think of any architect who even came near to having the style of randomly assorted elements that Hunter did. One of the comments on her post had suggested that she ask around for an artist who might do similar works. There were artists who drew a lot of funky houses.

“Elena,” Bobbi said happily when her friend answered the phone. “Do you know any artists who paint a lot of weird looking houses?”

“Is this about Hunter’s puzzle?”

Bobbi furrowed her brow. “Maybe.” She hadn’t realized any of her other friends knew about the puzzle; Mack and Elena hadn’t been over in the three days since the gingerbread house competition had been held, so they hadn’t even seen the puzzle in question.

“I can send you some names,” Elena said eventually. “But do you really think Hunter knows enough about art to make a puzzle based on an artist?”

“I don’t know,” Bobbi said, twirling a loose strand of hair around her finger. “But if he was trying to trick me he _would_.” Just like he had tried to trick her by making her think it was an architecture puzzle. (Granted, Hunter hadn’t actually said anything to imply that, but his best friend was an architect - what else was she supposed to think!?)

Elena chuckled over the phone. “Are we still good for game night tomorrow?” she asked, clearly changing the subject. 

“Christmas charades is a tradition!” Bobbi yelped, offended that Elena would suggest she’d ever cancel the most important game night of the year.

“Mack and I are going to win this year,” Elena teased.

“Are not!”

Bobbi _always_ won. 

And she was going to win this stupid puzzle competition too.

\---

“Maybe I’m thinking about this the wrong way,” Bobbi said as she slumped over the brunch table despondently. She’d spent another two days following leads about artists who painted houses, but that had turned up nothing - and now half her time was gone. There were only five more days until Christmas and she wasn’t any closer to solving Hunter’s puzzle than when she’d started.

“What are you thinking?” Jemma asked, patting the back of Bobbi’s head in a way that was probably meant to be consoling.

“I’ve been looking at it like a scavenger hunt, I think. Trying to find things that match what he put in front of me instead of looking at it like a puzzle that needed to be solved before it meant anything.” Bobbi sat back up and immediately took a swig of her mimosa. Because alcohol was _great_ in enhancing problem-solving skills.

“So what are the pieces you have to put together?” Jemma asked.

“Well, he only used two types of candies. That could be it. There could be a code in the colors of candies he used, I guess? Because there’s only… seven of them, I think?” The Mike and Ike’s had red, orange, yellow, green, and pink; the gumdrops had all of those colors except pink, but also had purple and white.

That might be a place to start.

“Can you think of any codes that have seven different options?” Bobbi asked.

Jemma shook her head, and Bobbi sighed deeply. If there were ten different candy colors, she would have thought it was a numeric code of some sort, but she couldn’t think of any numeric system that was base-seven.

“I need another mimosa,” she sighed.

\---

“It could be a binary code,” Daisy suggested as she began rolling out the sugar cookie dough. “You know, gumdrops are ones and Mike and Ikes are zeroes. Or the other way around, I guess.”

“That might be it,” Bobbi mused. “How many digits would I need to get all the letters of the alphabet?”

“Five.”

Bobbi groaned. “The longest chain I have is four.” she had carefully copied down the different puzzle pieces in writing so she didn’t have to squint at the pictures every time she wanted to stew over her puzzle. She’d written down whether the candy was a gumdrop or a Mike and Ike as well as its color, and what other candies it had been grouped next to. At least Hunter had made it easy to see where one puzzle piece stopped and another began; they had been spaced pretty evenly around his gingerbread house.

“So maybe he had something to say that was only in the first fifteen letters of the alphabet?” 

Daisy was more optimistic than Bobbi was, which was a theme in their relationship. 

“Your name is in the first fifteen letters of the alphabet?” Daisy suggested. She was beginning to cut star shapes out of her flattened cookie dough, and Bobbi handed her the next cookie cutter in line - the Christmas tree - before answering.

“There’s fourteen different pieces, though.”

“Maybe he wanted to say your name three times and just ran out of time?”

Bobbi snorted. “I don’t think it takes that long to glue candies to a house, Dais. Especially if he had the puzzle figured out already.”

“Well, did he?”

“Huh?”

“Was he looking at a paper or anything while you guys were doing your houses?”

Bobbi’s cheeks grew warm. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Some spy you are.”

“Working for the NIH doesn’t make me a spy!”

“Sure it doesn’t.”

\---

“Have you figured it out yet?” Hunter asked, sliding into bed beside her. 

Bobbi put down her novel and sighed. “No.” And tomorrow was Christmas Eve, full of different activities that would hardly give her the time to consider the puzzle any further. She had ten, maybe fifteen more minutes of thinking about the puzzle tonight before Hunter convinced her to sleep, and if she didn’t figure it out now, she was going to _lose_.

“Do you want a hint?” He kissed the top of Bobbi’s head carefully when she leaned against his shoulder.

“Maybe.”

“That’s a yes or no question, love.”

“Will your hint give it away?” Bobbi would _loathe_ to have Hunter just give her the answer. That was as good as losing in her book.

“I don’t know. I honestly thought you’d have gotten it by now.”

Bobbi sighed, burrowing deeper into Hunter’s shoulder. She’d disappointed him, and that was almost worse than losing.

(Okay. It was definitely worse than losing, because when Hunter got disappointed his eyes got all big and sad and she just wanted to make him feel better.)

“Give me the hint, then.”

“The puzzle was made for you, specifically, Bobbi Morse.”

Bobbi wrinkled her nose. She knew the puzzle was made for her - it was _their_ gingerbread competition after all - but…

 _Morse_. There was a reason Hunter had used her last name, wasn’t there?

“It’s Morse code!” she blurted, throwing the blanket off and leaping out of bed. “Ugh, I am so mad at you!”

“Why are you mad at _me_?” Hunter asked as he followed her out of the bedroom and downstairs to where she had all of her puzzle-related notes written down. “I thought I made it pretty bloody obvious!”

“Codes and puzzles are different,” Bobbi informed him tartly as she sat down with her pen and paper at the kitchen table. Hunter’s gingerbread house was still sitting there, mocking her.. He shouldn’t have said it was a puzzle if it was a code; if he had given her the right word she’d have solved it ages ago. That’s what she was telling herself, at least. Bobbi turned back to her paper, squinting at her own messy handwriting. Gumdrop, Mike and Ike, gumdrop. Dot dash dot. R.

“Are they?” Hunter asked, a smile in his voice. Bobbi couldn’t waste time looking up to see if the smile was also on his face - she’d just end up getting distracted by his stupid, perfect dimples and want to kiss him.

“They are,” she insisted, continuing down the line of puzzle pieces. Gumdrop, Mike and Ike. Dot dash. A. “And I’m not convinced you didn’t send me on a wild goose chase on purpose.”

“I most certainly did not,” Hunter said indignantly. “I want you to solve the puzzle! Code! Whatever!”

Bobbi just rolled her eyes at him and continued with her translating. When she was done, she had fourteen different letters written down the side of her paper. RYEAMRUIYOLLWM.

Because that totally made sense.

“You’re almost there,” Hunter said encouragingly. 

Okay. So the letters meant something, and she just needed to figure out what.

“It’s four different words, if that helps,” he offered.

Bobbi copied the list of letters onto a single line to see if there were any words that jumped out at her. There was a Y, O, and U, which she was guessing was one of the words.

You. Okay, that didn’t actually help much in figuring out what the larger phrase was.

REAMRIYLLWM.

Bobbi blinked at the remaining letters, as if somehow blinking enough times would make the answer pop out off the page. Every word she was thinking of needed a letter she didn’t have yet, except -

W-I-L-L. Will.

Will you -

The rest of the puzzle dropped into place all at once and Bobbi’s entire body went slack.

“No,” she whispered disbelievingly. “No way.”

“No?” Hunter repeated. This time Bobbi could spare the few seconds to look up at his face, and she _hated_ herself for how utterly lost he looked.

“No, I mean - _yes_ , I just -” She stood up and dragged Hunter in for a long kiss. “Yes, I’ll marry you, I just - _how_ did you think of this? And where have you been keeping the ring for the last eight days?! And how -?!” 

Bobbi was genuinely, whole-heartedly lost for words. Utter disbelief had been her first reaction, not because she didn’t want to marry Hunter but because she had been so sure that when he proposed, she would see it coming from a mile away. He was a sap and of course when he proposed it would be in a sentimental way -

Like with their yearly Christmas tradition. God, how had she not seen this coming?!

“Your ring,” Hunter said, reaching around her and pulling his gingerbread house across the table, “is inside.”

“What?” Bobbi said, shock still making her brain work too slowly.

Hunter lifted the roof off his gingerbread house - _she hadn’t even noticed he’d cut the roof off and put an engagement ring inside!_ \- and there, sitting in the center of the house, was a black velvet ring box.

“Bobbi Morse,” Hunter said, grabbing the ring box from the house and sinking down to one knee, “you are the most spectacular woman I know. No matter how much time I spend with you, I just want more. I want more time to make you laugh and more time to hug you and even more time to lose to you in every competition you make up. The last three years with you have made me a better partner, but they’ve also made me a better man, and I don’t want to ever let go of you. So, will you marry me?”

“I already said yes!” Bobbi blubbered, wiping at her eyes before extending her left hand to Hunter.

“You said no first, so I had to double check!” he protested as he slid the ring on. 

It fit perfectly. Not that she had expected otherwise, since Hunter had just proved he had much more attention to detail than anyone gave him credit for, but this was her _engagement ring_ and it fit perfectly and wow, she was still definitely in shock.

Bobbi stared down at her hand in Hunter’s, not even really seeing the ring so much as the scene before her. They were both in their pajamas, the kitchen was a mess, and his hands were covered in gingerbread crumbs from when he’d lifted the top off of his house. It was all still so _perfect_ , so _right_ , because it was with him.

Bobbi looked over his head to the little porchlight she had put on the front door of her gingerbread house - a yellow gumdrop lighting the way home for any little gingerbread people that were lost.

Her eyes were drawn back to Hunter, as they always were, and she gently tugged him to standing, cradling his face in her hands.

“I love you,” she whispered, pressing a careful kiss to his lips.

She had won the puzzle game, but for once Bobbi’s competitive spirit wasn’t roaring for victory because she had won - at least, not _just_ because she had won.

She was happy because the prize was that she was going to marry Lance Hunter -

And she was never going to be lost again.

**Author's Note:**

> Merry (early) Christmas! I hope you all enjoyed this Christmas fluff. :)


End file.
